“Baghead”: An Effective Ghost Story, Or A Monster In The Bag? | Review

Call me crazy, but I think I know how to lower real estate prices worldwide – thanks to horror movies. The idea is so simple and logical that it’s surprising that no one has thought of it yet: spread horror stories about various real estate properties, such as ghosts or monsters, and watch how the demand for them drops, along with the prices. After all, who would want to move into a building that looks like a location for a horror movie with a story we’ve already seen a thousand and one times, some cheap scares, and preferably with a little twist for the sake of variety?

“Baghead” is another film in the extensive saga of real estate properties with dark secrets. So it’s true that this time, for a change, we’re not talking about a huge house but about an old pub, and not about ghosts but about a bewitched/demonic character who is in the basement and has a bag on his head that makes her communicate as some dead person, but the main idea is similar. The film doesn’t innovate too much in terms of narrative or scares, but it still manages to be fun and do the job, thanks to an effective monster, an impressive performance by the leading actress, and a few surprises.

The Plot Of Baghead: Every Pub Has Its Secrets

“Baghead” takes place in Berlin and deals with a British-style pub that belongs to a Scottish family if I understand the lineage in this multinational film correctly. It begins with a scene in which a guy named Neil (Jeremy Irvine, “War Horse, “Great Expectation,” “The Woman in Black: Angel of Death ” and soon the highly-anticipated “Return to Silent Hill”) arrives at a pub and wants to talk to the woman in the basement. The pub owner (the veteran Peter Mullan, “Trainspotting,” “Boy A,” “Hercules”) refuses. He records a short video explaining the game’s main rules concerning the thing in the basement. He tries to burn it but finds himself burning it. This is not very scary, but we get a reasonably routine opening for films of this type, which shows us the main plot, the setting, and even a tiny taste of the villain.

This is the trailer of “Baghead”, to start wite:

Our heroine is Iris (Freya Allan, “The Witcher,” “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” “Gunpowder Milkshake”), the estranged daughter of the pub owner, who abandoned his family for a reason that we will understand later. While she’s trying to figure out how she’s going to make it through the month without much of a job or even a place to sleep, Iris receives a phone call with the news that doesn’t bother her: The death of her father, whom she already considered as dead. She travels to Berlin to identify the body, realizes that there’s a property that they want to get rid of, and asks for it for herself – an old, not-so-successful pub. She dreams of renovating it and turning it into a place worth hanging out at, but then reality intervenes.

Some mysterious noises in the empty pub in the middle of the night, and the weird guy from earlier arrives. He offers Iris no less than 4,000 euros to visit the woman in the basement – and not because she is a high-end whore, as we will understand later. She takes some of the money and, after a day of thinking, realizes that she’s found a great source of income, especially since we later learn that the talented saleswoman there even managed to charge a higher price than her father, who took from that guy an impressive sum of 2,000 euros for two minutes with her body (it’s not what you think).

Iris signs the papers that transfer ownership of the pub to her, confident that she has found a bountiful source of cash. The next day returns there with the guy and her best friend Katie (Ruby Barker, “Bridgerton”, “How to Stop a Recurring Dream”), but then things start to get horribly wrong.

Meet The Monster Under The Bag

Pretty soon, we figured out what was in the basement: some monstrous entity that lived in a hole in the brick wall, and you should cover her head in a bag (I am not Sherlock Holmes, but I think that this is the reason the movie is called “Baghead”).

There are some vital rules, some of which we learn about through the late father’s instructional video. The principle is that if you bring an object of a deceased person to the “Sia-wannabe-ghost” it will turn into that person for a few minutes. However, doing so for no more than two minutes is a good idea because otherwise, terrible things will happen.

It’s time for a short break from the plot description because you may already be thinking something like, “So what’s new here, god-damn? We’ve already been in this movie many times, dude. What’s up with these movies today, brother, the horror movie are going nowhere!”. You may have a point because we’ve already seen a lot of movies with some dark secrets. There are fewer but still a lot of movies where the secret is in the basement.

Talk To Me Meets Barbarian (Kind Of)

One of the reasons for the rise of this type of movie may be the success of “Barbarian,” which started as a routine movie and became very interesting and even scary when we realized what exactly was in the basement of that rental house. Not long ago, we wrote here on the site about “Cellar Door,” in which a couple gets a free house in exchange for a promise never to open the Cellar Door (I am not Hercule Poirot, but maybe the movie is called “Cellar Door” for this reason). In “Baghead,” some secrets and prohibitions are challenging to abide by, and unlike “Cellar Door,” we’ll even get some answers about that scary entity.

“Baghead” can also be classified as “objects that allow us to communicate with the dead” sub-genre. We’ve already learned that in the world of horror, almost any object can be infected, allowing communication with the other side or at least some jump scares. The idea here is a little too reminiscent of the excellent “Talk to Me,” one of the finest horror films of recent years, with a few cosmetic changes: say, a hand instead of a woman with a bag over her head or a maximum time of 90 seconds to finish the communication. In “Talk to Me,” the protagonists have 90 minutes to finish the process because otherwise, terrible things will happen. To the credit of the screenwriters of “Baghead” they went very large this time, giving the characters two whole minutes – 120 seconds, if you trust the computer’s calculator – to talk to the dead.

What can you do in two minutes with a dead person? It’s not clear, and fortunately, not what you think. Such a minimal period can perhaps alleviate some of the longings but mainly get answers to some burning questions, such as who Neil’s late wife (Saffron Burrows, who we recently saw in “Dangerous Waters”) had an affair with before her death because the man wants to take revenge on that guy or maintain his masculine image.

There Is A Mystery, But No Complexity

Unsurprisingly, things get out of hand in a horror film at some point. For example, the time limit in horror films is a recommendation because we know that the character will break the rules at some point, allowing the plot to move forward.

Sometimes, we understand the dilemma, like the perfect “The Substance,” who presented an aging Hollywood star with the option of “changing” into a perfect young version of herself for a week and then again. So, two minutes is nothing, and exactly how they got to this time limit is unclear. Despite the two-minute limit and the late father’s warning in that viral video that “Baghead” will get stronger, get out of control, and may escape the basement if they don’t keep to the time, there is a time-lapse very quickly, and it has consequences.

Some of the characters are researching the history of the building and discovering what happened here a few hundred years ago and who that woman with a sack on her head is (spoiler: it’s not Sia). In the meantime, the character on the wall begins to have her desires, which may be related to who her partner was and the specific place they are now in. There are a few twists towards the end, some more believable and some less so, which is OK for me. I usually don’t come to a movie about a cruel entity with a bag on her head living in a hole in a brick wall in the basement of a Scottish pub in Berlin to look for logic, right?

We can strive for emotional depth, and it happened just partly. The idea of ​​difficulty overcoming the death of a loved one recurs in many horror films and stories because it is effective and related to the fear most people have. We have already learned that this can come at a heavy price, which puts the characters in a dilemma: should we get another taste of the loved one even if it comes at a cost? It quickly becomes clear that the characters will make “irrational” decisions that drive the scary story, especially since, in our case, there are also other motives (financial, mainly). Or, as the film poster says: “Talk to the Dead. Pay the Price!”. This is probably also true when they want to make money from people who want to talk to the dead, and the price here can be even higher.

In the case of “Baghdad,” I didn’t feel like I was part of the dilemma. The film presented the dilemma and the considerations here and there in a rather superficial way. A possible explanation is that other films that have already dealt with communication with the dead or the ability to bring back a loved one presented it better, so we knew what we were getting into.

You won’t get moral complexity here and metaphors about death and coming to terms with loss, as in the case of the excellent Australian horror psychology film “The Babadook” from 2014. “Baghead” didn’t innovate too much on what we’ve already learned from horror films about the topics it deals with, and it didn’t take the story to too interesting theoretical places, but it’s not too bad. That’s not why we gathered here, after all.

Who Is The Monster In The Wall?

The tension structure in films like “Baghdad” can be related to various elements, and the question is to what extent the film succeeds in each. If we go back to “Talk to Me,” we have some compelling and pretty scary scenes surrounding the encounter with the dead.

“Baghead” does not have this effectiveness. The film is primarily well-constructed in terms of the use of location, the cinematography (which manages to convey the fear of dark places, but for a change, does allow the viewer to see something), and sound editing. It includes some tense scenes, from the question “Who is this? Who is this?” under the bag every time to a specific concern for the fate of the characters.

“Baghead” was directed by Alberto Corredor. The feature film is actually an extension of a short film (about 15 minutes) of the same name he made in 2017, based on a script by Lorcan Reilly. The full-length film’s screenplay was written by two additional writers, Bryce McGuire (“Night Swim”) and Christina Pamies (in her first film). The story is primarily well-written, except for a certain awkwardness in constructing the framework story, the plot’s progress – as in many other cases, the film loses momentum in its last third – and the characters’ motivations. The cast of “Baghead” does a decent job, led by the super-talented Freya Allan. However, there is place for improvement regarding character development or a close emotional connection to them.

In addition, the film is unsurprisingly flawed in the main character’s decision-making, which, to put it mildly, is very stupid in some cases, as if a metaphorical sack were sitting on her head, cutting off the oxygen flow to her brain. The character of the best friend behaves more rationally. Still, her screen time is more limited, as befits a character of a heroine’s best friend in a horror film, whose role is mainly to let the heroine convey her thoughts without speaking to herself, to discover some of the answers, and perhaps also to die relatively early.

Although we didn’t find details about the official budget for the film, one can quickly conclude that it was limited. Anne Müller, who plays “Baghead,” seems to take advantage of almost every opportunity to make the character creepier or more memorable, with body and facial movements, distorted voice, and other actions from the lexicon of haunted characters or characters. Still, I think this monster is forgettable and will not accompany me through nightmares.

It is possible that with a larger budget or a more developed imagination of the creators, we would have gotten a monster that is a little more “impressive.” In some cases, the choice to rely on effects is not successful because it seems to perpetuate the idea that we are talking about a low budget here, significantly since the visual effects range from routine to cliché. It may have been better to stay in the practical effects sector, makeup, or whatever.

Should You Watch Baghead?

On the horror level, the “Baghead” is not exactly memorable. There are jump scares and a character designed in a rather frightening way, but it is difficult for it to be too scary or have scenes that will stay with me. It’s a shame because there was a lot of potential for a terrifying movie here. “Baghead” is a time-saver and mostly enjoyable, but you might forget about it quickly.

The bottom line is that “Baghead” is a pretty routine movie. Although the film got theatrical screenings in different locations, it was distributed relatively limitedly worldwide and, as of this writing, has grossed a relatively modest amount of just over $6.5 million. From a practical perspective, it combines several ideas that we’ve already seen in more successful versions: say, as mentioned, “Barbarian” meets “Talk to Me” or another take-off on the “ancient structure with the secrets beneath the surface” movies. It is enjoyable mainly and justifies the not-too-long time devoted to it, so you can give it a chance.

Baghead – Everything You Need To Know

Year: 2024

Director: Alberto Corredor

Cast: Freya Allan, Peter Mullan, Jeremy Irvine, Saffron Burrows, Ruby Barker

Screenplay: Lorcan Reilly, Bryce McGuire, Christina Femmes

Running time: 94 minutes

Country of production: United States, Germany

Language: English

Release date (United Kingdom): 24.1.24

Budget: Undisclosed

Worldwide GrossingsGrossings: Approximately $6.5 million (according to Box Office Mojo)

MPAA rating (Parents Guide) (: R

Reviews score:

IMDB: 5.4

Rotten Tomatoes: 29%

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